The 'Electric Election': energy policies, side by side
Winter cold snaps led to the country hitting record electricity usage multiple times at the start of this month with eight of the 10 highest demand periods in history reached in the first two weeks of August. It's driven calls to speed up consumers' ability to feed back into the grid via their electric vehicles. And to pay households for cutting electricity use at peak times. Bruce Fowler from NordEast and Margaret Cooney from Octopus talk to Kathryn Ryan.
Retailer Octopus offered its customers cash for every kilowatt-hour they saved, during some of the biggest peaks this month.
A current barrier to getting EVs involved is the carmaker's warranty, which restricts two-way usage of the battery.
One of the country's major EV importers and distributors, NordEast, a subsidiary of the Giltrap Group, is underwriting the warranties for cars in a trial in Queenstown, being run by EECA.
Kathryn speaks to Bruce Fowler from NordEast and Margaret Cooney from Octopus.
BloombergNEF says sales of combustion cars peaked in 2017 and there's no coming back, while a new study in New Zealand shows petrol vehicles were losing value more quickly than equivalent models did a decade ago; big batteries aren't just for storing electricity, they can also store heat; the story of the world's biggest electric ferry and the Australian company that made it; electric motorbikes are doing a lot of heavy lifting on emissions reduction, so why don't they get more attention?; and a new show called HallowGreen2 that tackles the energy transition "with music, humour and a hopeful message”.
Read moreDownloadRNZ's Kate Newton looks at why no-one is really talking about emissions as an election issue. As Mike Casey said: "The climate movement up until this point has been very, very good at creating dartboards, but terrible at providing people with darts to play the game." That's allowed for inaction, and active lobbying against climate change action from fossil fuel companies and others who stand to lose out ... The solution is "flipping it into a strong economic narrative that they can't possibly fight with".
Read moreDownloadHumans are comparative creatures and they're particularly comparative during election season. That's why we've created a rundown of all the energy-related election policies that have been announced by the parties so far.
Read moreDownload
